[2] in Humor
HUMOR: Dave - Second Honeymoon
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Fri Jan 14 10:34:59 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 94 10:31:13 -0500
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Jan 8th, 1994
Recently, my wife and I decided to put some "zing" back
into our marriage by going to a "couples only" resort. This is a
popular new type of resort that does not allow you to bring your
children, the theory being that it is difficult for you and your
spousal unit to get into a romantic mood if one of you has to
pause every 45 seconds to shout, "JASON! I TOLD YOU NOT TO SQUIRT
SUN BLOCK INTO ASHLEY'S EAR!"
The resort we went to is in St. Lucia, a small and lovely
island nation 'way out in the Caribbean, not far from Grenada,
which is the island that Ronald Reagan rescued from the Communist
Menace. I am frankly amazed that the Communist Menace was a
problem in that area, because to get there you have to spend all
day scrunched up in various airplanes. I would have thought that
by the time the Communist Menace finally arrived and located its
luggage, all it would have wanted to do was lie down and enjoy a
refreshing popular local beverage consisting of rum mixed with
rum.
That's certainly what we wanted to do when we got to St.
Lucia, but we had to spend the first hour and a half riding in a
small, couple-filled van from one end of the island to the other
on the main road, which apparently also doubles as a strip mine.
Technically, you're supposed to drive on the left-hand side in St.
Lucia, but the drivers swerve all over the place to avoid the
holes, which means that sometimes both your vehicle and an
oncoming vehicle are in the same lane. The only strict driving
rule in St. Lucia is "No hurtling off a cliff into the Caribbean
without a good reason."
At one point -- I am not making this up -- our van was
driving down the middle of the road, and oncoming traffic was
passing us ON BOTH SIDES. This occurred when we were making our
way through a traffic jam caused by the largest banana spill I
have ever seen. (Bananas are the No. 1 industry on St. Lucia,
followed by tourism and goats.) This was on a steep hill, where a
massive load of bananas had slid off a truck, thus forming a
tremendous natural defense in case the Communist Menace ever comes
back to the area with tanks. ("Drive down that hill, Comrade!"
"OK! Here we gooOOONOOOOO ...")
Eventually we got to our resort. It is what the travel
industry calls an "all-inclusive" resort, which means that you
pay a flat amount of money per day, and the resort sets out large
mounds of food, and you try to include it all in your body. "Hey,
I PAID for this food," is what you are constantly telling
yourself, to justify the fact that you are already mounding your
plate with lunch even though you have not, technically, finished
chewing your breakfast.
The food was served on a veranda next to a lovely, palm-
fringed beach, so at every meal we enjoyed a breathtaking view of
various guys' armpits. A lot of guys, when they are on vacation in
a tropical climate, wear "tank-style" tops, so that if you
happen to glance up from your food mound just as a guy at the next
table raises his arm to signal the waiter for another rum and rum,
you find yourself staring into his hairy armpit, hovering in front
of you like some hideous mutant alien space rodent.
I think there should be a "No Armpits" section.
But getting back to our all-inclusive resort: For those
brief interludes when we were not eating, we were encouraged to
engage in a constant barrage of organized fun activities such as
volleyball, water polo, sailing, hiking; sightseeing, windsurfing,
snorkeling, scuba-diving, ball-hitting and bun-flexing. At night
there were talent shows, newlywed games, group singing, movie-
showing, limbo-dancing and of course more food-eating. This level
of fun takes a physical toll. If you are a middle-aged person such
as myself, by the end of just one day, your marriage has about as
much zing as a severely over-steamed carrot, if you get my drift.
To avoid total exhaustion, we left the resort compound
several times. We went to the "Jump Up," a regular Friday night
event wherein people come from all over the island to a town
called Gros Islet. Everybody gathers in a street lined with shoe-
box-sized bars and people selling grilled food. In the middle of
the street are some gigantic speakers, blasting reggae music. It's
a fine place to enjoy refreshing beverages and watch your braver
fellow vacationers doing a highly entertaining dance called "The
Tourist," in which a person attempts to get down and funky while
wearing a fanny pack.
On another day we courageously rented a car with 25,000
St. Lucian miles on it (equivalent to 4.3 million Earth miles) and
drove around with another couple, Eileen and Steve. Steve likes to
fish, a fact that produced the following actual dialogue:
EILEEN (looking at a guidebook): Oooh, Steve, it says here
that in this town, you can sometimes see local fishermen gut their
catch on the beach!
STEVE: YESSSS!
We drove to a village called Canaries, where we decided to
stop, primarily because our route was blocked by a highway
construction crew, probably constructing new holes in the road. We
got out, went into a local establishment and purchased some beers
from a bartender who was maybe 10 years old. Nearby, three elderly
people, two men and a woman, were sitting by the side of the road,
passing a bottle around. The woman laughed, leaned way back, and
opened her mouth wide.
LUUUUVE, she sang, is a MANY SPLENDORED thing....
The people in Canaries seemed very relaxed, despite the
fact that they were not, technically, on vacation. I'm not sure
what their secret is. Maybe it's an all-inclusive village.
(C) 1994 THE MIAMI HERALD
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
